Jukebox
by kingofFevers
Summary: These past few days have felt a bit final. There was a certain weight to them, especially at night. It was a little weird, but you think you knew what it was from the start. Now that everything's ending, you feel a little excited. It'll all be over, soon. (Rated T - Suicide)


**A/N:**

 **(Set before the events of the game.)**

 **Before you read.**

 **This story is literally about a person contemplating suicide, and you know all the """fun stuff""" that comes with that. There's a lot of contemplating, existential crises, some brief mentions of the classic bullshit "dont kill yourself" arguments, and a little bit (read: a lot) of hopelessness towards the end.**

 **If you don't like that stuff, turn and run away now. I mean it. I don't want anybody to have to suffer through this just because they read a random fanfic. If you think this'll affect you horribly, please go away.**

 **If you're still here, awesome? Have fun reading.**

 **Oh, and one last thing: The songs (Circles, Don't Stop Me Now, Stuck) belong to KIRA, Queen, and Project Overdoze Respectively.**

 **Enjoy.**

* * *

You'd stopped completely.

Not right now, but several hours earlier. You had no idea how long you'd been laying on your bed, completely inactive, but if the lights from the window were any indication, it's probably really late at night.

This wasn't how you thought you'd be spending your last day.

You weren't even confident if it would even _work_ in the first place at all, but that's not something you wanted to think about.

The playlist your jukebox was blaring had looped a second time; you can tell, you remember that first song playing earlier this morning. Had you really been here this long?

There was nothing going on anywhere, nothing that you noticed, anyway. Aside from the dirty dishes on the sink, nothing in the house had changed since you woke up.

You'd been staring at the same stuffed toys and posters for hours.

 _Circles in circles, I go around_

 _Looking for something that can't be found_

" _Circles in circles, without a sound,_ " You sang along, your voice soft and hoarse, " _My tears can't be heard when the fear surrounds my heart._ "

Funny how much you could relate to poems with a melody.

You sang with the song, not bothering too much at this point to match the notes or, really, making yourself sound good in general. Who was going to listen, anyway? It's not like anyone could, anyway; they'd probably have to strain their ears to hear you.

 _I know too well, 'cause every second like this feels like hell_

 _Are these words that you gave me real? I can't tell._

You were supposed to continue doing the maths for the Building Competition, which was weeks away from now. Olivia had suggested planning ahead for once.

Going by the current progress, you don't think it's all too successful.

 _It doesn't matter, no nothing matters_

 _I'll see you again in a dream so far away_

Points to her for trying, though.

And really, for having you as a 'friend.' She'd always looked forward to challenging herself when it came to redstone, and the Building Competition was almost always when she did. Dying now, you'd be letting them down.

As if you hadn't done that so many times before.

How could you be this selfish?

 _So come, take my hand and_

 _Come, make me feel what it's like_

 _When love comes alive_

You screwed your eyes shut. "And one day I wish that I won't keep hiding the truth. Away from you…"

 _Oh trust me, I do_

You choked.

The work you did on the calculations was, in the best way to say it, half-assed. You hadn't tried very much, and you're sure most of them were very, very wrong. If Olivia were to see them, she'd probably blanch. Maybe she wouldn't say it to your face (or maybe she would, both were possible), but she would have been very disappointed in you for messing up in something so important and something that you yourself said you understood perfectly.

If you died now, she'd be left to do the calculations on her own, and that's assuming she and Axel would continue with the competition anyway.

And you wouldn't be able to finish everything that you still wanted to do.

Even if life was completely meaningless, for some inexplicable reason, you still wanted to do so much more. There were countless books collecting dust in your shelf that you still wanted to read; You haven't seen a waterfall for yourself yet, which you've wanted to do so badly ever since Axel explained the concept to you; There was a cool shop opening during Endercon that you wanted to visit, they said it was going to have up-to-date, higher quality maps, and god knows how much you want to see beyond what you knew.

You told yourself before that it would be fine if you didn't see them. You reasoned that they were probably cool and that you didn't need to see it, but that hadn't satisfied you as much as you liked it to.

And even with that, you still wanted to prove yourself at Endercon. Bullies be damned, you wanted to win at least _once_. There were so many ideas that you had for builds for upcoming competitions, you just didn't have the skillset to pull them off yet. You could always learn, that was an option, but your slow progress and horrid laziness were discouraging and ultimately unhelpful.

 _Chemical imbalances_ , you told yourself.

You tried to think that you weren't 100% at fault for having a natural ability to sleep more than to work. It didn't work most of the time.

Still, there was something so… _upsetting_ , knowing that, with just one move, you would never, ever be able to do the things that you wanted to do.

Your life was a mess, and you wanted nothing more than to just _leave_ , to sleep forever.

So why did you want to stay?

It didn't make any sense.

Slipping back into reality, you noticed that the song was completely different now. You also noticed that your eyes were getting wet. Oddly enough, it made you feel happy, hoping that you were able to at all, but it was disheartening too. You had a track record of crying because of reasons almost every year, and you were doing _so well_ not crying at all this time. If you're lucky, it would stop there.

 _Don't stop me now_

 _I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball_

 _Don't stop me now_

 _If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call_

Despite yourself, you cracked a smile. The tune didn't fit the current situation at all, obviously, but the jazz cover of that song was always nice to hear.

For a while, you let yourself get lost in the music.

 _I'm burning through the sky, yeah  
Two hundred degrees  
That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit  
I'm travelling at the speed of light  
I want to make a supersonic man out of you_

It would be over, soon. You'd be able to sleep forever. Sure, whatever was at the other side could be way worse than what you had now, but to tell the truth, what did that matter? Everybody dies. You would end up there regardless of when you died.

You're just leaving early, that's all.

It's no big deal. Axel and Olivia would move on easy, you're sure of it. They can't let something like their friend dying stop them from moving forward with their lives. You would all meet again someday, anyway.

Right?

The jukebox played in the background, going through the playlist song by song. You occasionally sang along, your eyes getting just a little more wet as you thought more and more, drowning further in the toxic environment in your head.

 _It'll be over, soon_ , you told yourself. _It'll all be over._

You continued to sing along to whatever the jukebox played, your voice barely above a whisper.

 _So I am falling to the ground_

 _I can't get up, I don't know how_

" _And it seems like I am all,_ " You sang, your voice muffled, " _All I'll ever be..._ "

Was your voice shaking?

You could feel something trail your face, and you instinctively blink to get the water out of your eyes.

Nevertheless, you continued the song, although your voice began to waver, getting worse very quickly as you sang the last chorus.

 _And it's too late for me now_

 _Will not learn, never know how_

 _Voided colors bleeding out my monochrome_

All of a sudden, you broke into a sob, your breath hitching continuously and tears spilling from your eyes and dropping onto the sheets. Before, the realization that nothing mattered was just a mere thought, but now, it was a hard slap to the face. _Nothing matters. We're all going to die._

Nothing mattered.  
Nothing mattered.  
Nothing mattered.  
Nothing mattered.

 _ **You**_ _didn't matter._

Sobbing even harder, you stop singing entirely.

You didn't want this.

 _And my thoughts are falling out_

 _Brain is splattered on the ground_

 _Hanging five feet in the air, I've figured out_

 _There's no way out_

Actually, you didn't know _what_ you wanted. You wanted to die, to sleep forever, but at the same time you wanted to do so many things; to learn everything there was to know, have fun, all that stuff. So _why_? Why these conflicting goals? Why couldn't you just die and let it all end? There was no meaning to anything, and you could die any second by anybody or anything, so why not just do yourself in before anything can happen? Why can't you do something as simple as that?

The presence of the hook that you attached to the ceiling suddenly became amplified, as if it was ringing directly in your ear, brightening itself in your dark room, screaming at you. It wasn't laughing, it wasn't crying. It was just there.

 _I'm right here._ _ **Look at me.**_

You can't die because you're too afraid. You're scared of everything; Of what will happen to you in the following days or months or years of your life, of what will happen if you died here and now, how that will affect your only two friends, what the Ocelots would think, if anybody would find you or not…

You wanted to leave a mark on the world. You didn't want your existence -which you _never even asked for_ \- to be such a waste. You couldn't just give up on it like that, but it sounded _so nice_. You're scared of the pain when you die, you're scared of the afterlife.

And you realize, the worst of it all, when you finally look up from the sheets and at the rope laying on the chair in front of your bed.

You're scared of dying alone.

You could push yourself to die, that was for sure. You've done so many new and impossible things (to you) before, you could do another no problem, but going out alone was _terrifying_. It was worse than the monsters under the bed or in the dark or the horror novels in the library. It was full on _loneliness_.

Nobody would be here to comfort you in your last moments, nobody would be here to see you go. Nobody would be here to tell you that everything will be okay. Nobody will be here to hold your hand one last time.

It would just be you, choking as the rope strangles the air out of your lungs, alone in the dark.

Sure, somebody would find your body, but by then, you'd be long gone.

It isn't just loneliness, it's _emptiness_.

All anybody would find would be an empty house, completely devoid of life, and nobody was there to see the last of it go. It didn't matter if the room was dark or not, nobody was here with you.

On your bedside table was a picture of you and your friends at Endercon, just a little under two years ago. Axel was grinning and wasn't even looking at the camera, his eyes shut even though he was the one taking the picture. Olivia's smile was barely visible, but you know it's there. Then there was you, smiling from ear to ear. There was nothing nice or out of the ordinary you could say about your appearance, not before, but looking at it now, you wished you could have it back.

You always had the constant on-and-off feelings of emptiness, but you were always able to get back out of it and return to a normal, relatively happy routine.

What happened to that?

These past few days for you felt so _final_ , like it was actually ending, but you didn't want it to. Maybe. Probably.

Despite yourself, you sob even harder. (At this rate, you don't think you can speak at all.)

You wanted an out. You need help, it's obvious, but like all other things, it's so scary. What other people would think, how your friends treated you, the _uncertainty_ ; You know all this, you've thought that over before, but now it just looks like the only thing that makes sense. Call out to your friends, tell them point-blank what's going on and literally beg them for help.

This feeling -your current state, how you were right now- was unbearable. Everything's happening all at once and to hell with what the consequences might be; if you can't kill yourself but you can't bear to live with what was going on, then the only thing you could do was change what was going on.

It all made sense.

But was it something that you could achieve right now?

You sit there, without a clue on what to do, and just cry.

Once again, you fall back into the void.


End file.
